Washington Buys a Century of Venezuela, One Oil Field at a Time
Under a White House-backed agreement, North American Blue Energy Partners would receive a 100-year lease on 17 Venezuelan oil fields holding about 65 billion barrels; the U.S. government would take a 35 percent stake in its parent, receive 20 percent of production at cost and get first refusal on the rest. The agreement turns a vast share of another country’s natural resources into an American financial asset.
Administration Asks Supreme Court to Let the Postal Service Inspect Democracy’s Envelope
The administration asked the Supreme Court to revive a plan allowing USPS to reject states’ mail-ballot envelopes unless they meet federal specifications and requiring states to upload voter information to a government portal that Justice Department lawyers could not confirm was operational. Elections remain safely under state control, provided the states submit their voter lists and envelopes for federal approval first.
HHS Discovers Gender-Affirming Views Are a Gateway to “Left-Wing Authoritarianism”
HHS commissioned a 1,208-person survey report associating support for gender-affirming norms with “left-wing authoritarianism” and greater willingness to justify political violence, while the report itself acknowledges that experimental research would be needed to establish causation. The state has bravely measured dissent, diagnosed it as authoritarian and published the diagnosis under the seal of the state.
IRS Prepares to Tax Schools That Remember Racism Happened
Treasury and the IRS proposed stripping tax-exempt status from schools that consider race in admissions, scholarships, discipline or efforts to remedy past discrimination, while preserving preferences based on religious affiliation. Government has finally achieved neutrality: institutions may organize around a faith, but attempting to repair a documented racial injury could become a taxable offense.
ICE Puts the Entire Detention-to-Deportation Pipeline Out for Bid
ICE solicited private operators for a 5,500-bed, four-region system covering detention, armed transport, court space, medical and food services, removal paperwork and departure logistics under contracts that could run for a decade. Deportation is no longer merely a government power; it is a vertically integrated growth industry with beds, buses, courtrooms and manifests available from one convenient vendor.
States May Keep Welfare Money After Turning Every Agency Into an Immigration Tip Line
A Justice Department opinion says every agency in states participating in TANF, SSI and certain federal housing programs must report people it knows are unlawfully present, and the federal government may withdraw program funds for noncompliance. Benefits largely unavailable to undocumented immigrants can now serve a higher purpose: leverage over assistance intended for everybody else.
Education Department Protects Trans Students From Bullying Data by Deleting the Data
The Education Department’s revised civil-rights collection omits nonbinary enrollment figures, gender-identity bullying allegations and questions about related school policies that appeared in the prior collection. The administration has found a zero-cost cure for discrimination: remove the fields that record it, close the spreadsheet and announce that the numbers look excellent.
After six deportees reportedly refused to disembark in Liberia, the United States transferred them to Equatorial Guinea, a country none was from, where they were held under armed guard with limited access to food, hygiene, medical care and outside contact. Due process has become an international shell game.
Migrant farmworker in Sanger, California. USDA photo by Bob Nichols / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
LABOR
Labor Department Retires the Machinery Built to Protect Migrant Farmworkers
The Labor Department repealed a 1980 rule requiring its wage, safety and employment agencies to coordinate enforcement for migrant and seasonal farmworkers, saying its committees and planning requirements had become obsolete. Employers receive a leaner government; workers receive the traditional efficiency of falling between offices that no longer have to meet.
Excavation Set to Start for a 250-Foot “One Nation Under God” Arch Before Final Approval
The administration says excavation will begin within two weeks for Trump’s proposed 250-foot gilded triumphal arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, although final planning approval remains outstanding, an NPS review found adverse effects on historic sightlines and a lawsuit disputes the project’s authorization. Nothing says humble constitutional republic like scheduling the emperor-scale monument while the permission remains under review.
White House ballroom construction, July 10, 2026. G. Edward Johnson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
PLUTOCRACY
$400 Million White House Ballroom Rises While Congress Waits Outside
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily allowed aboveground construction on Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom to continue while litigation over congressional authorization proceeds. The people’s house is acquiring monarchical scale through private money, executive will and a judicial permission slip delivered before the public’s representatives get a vote.
Texas Commands Every Public-School Classroom to Display the Ten Commandments
Texas requires every public-school classroom to prominently display the Ten Commandments while families challenging the mandate ask the Supreme Court to strike it down. Christian nationalism no longer needs to sneak prayer into school; the state can mount scripture on the wall and require every child to learn beneath it.
Trump Threatens $5 Billion Lawsuit Against Researchers Who Measured His Guard Deployment
Trump threatened to sue the Center for American Progress unless it retracted an analysis finding no measurable violent-crime reduction attributable to National Guard deployments. The authoritarian state has reached the peer-review stage: inconvenient findings will be answered with a damages demand large enough to end the institution that calculated them.
Immigration Courts Turn Due Process Into a Bulk-Scheduled Deportation Line
Justice Department immigration courts are placing as many as 100 or 150 people into mass initial hearings, and missing one can produce an in absentia removal order; DOJ says those orders result from people failing to appear, not from its scheduling effort. Industrialized deportation has found its ideal due-process model: one packed docket, one missed appearance and one strike before exile.
D.C. Crime Fell Before the Guard Arrived; Pentagon Plans to Keep 2,500 Troops Through 2029
Crime in Washington had already fallen 29 percent before the National Guard deployment, yet the Pentagon plans to retain roughly 2,500 troops in the city through early 2029. Militarized government has solved the absence of an emergency by extending the occupation until reality learns to justify it.
